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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

I Said, Please Remain Seated for the Duration of the Flight! and Halloween Wishes

There's always one.

You're on a flight, and you won't be landing for a good long time, but some joker has to get out of his seat, and make ready to leave, as if he can walk faster than the aircraft is going. Of course this upsets the flight crew, and spreads tension, and just makes the flight worse for everyone. They say it's dangerous, I don't know about that... it's not going to break the plane is it? Then again....

This is the centerpiece for the genestealer cult army. I feel every army should have a centerpiece:
One item that is bigger, more dynamic, more impressive than the rest of the army. One item which will serve to draw the eye to the center of the army, and as the eye wanders around to the rest of it, will pull it back to the centerpiece.

All of the vehicles have infestation, and some are even piloted by alien creatures, like the walkers with the tentacle & brain creatures. 2 of the aircraft have creatures piloting them like the walkers..

which are hopefully pretty cool in their own right. But the theory of a centerpiece is let one item take the spotlight like nothing else, and it will be better over-all for the army than if everything was at that level.

Like a crescendo in music, the composition needs somewhere to go: if every moment as loud and thunderous the listener would get worn out and lose interest. Tchaikovsky understood this, a lot of death metal bands don't.

So this is the moment the piece kicks in. Yes, it's an army, out to destroy the enemy, but at it's heart is the unthinking growth & aggression that is Tyranid DNA. Something too big to be contained any longer by its host of human body and technology is coming to its own. Will he bring the plane down? Perhaps. But i suspect he'll be fine, while his targets will not.

The back panel is busting outward, showing that he has growth-expanded from the inside.
The upper hole is smaller than the bulk of his chest, for 2 reasons:
1. practical: unless breaking the engines,there isn't a spot on the plane that is wider than his chest.
2. dynamic biology: he's in the process of growing- rapidly- right now, plus I imagine he can expand his chest, like a cobra's hood, to threaten other creatures, and so, like a rat, can squeeze through openings that are seemingly much smaller than his size.

I'm very pleased with the result: the creature ends up with a lot more serpentine motion than the original model since it doesn't have to stand supported on his tail.

Painting is already in progress,but I wanted to save the picture for a Halloween scare- I'm sure that in the year 40,000 there are many kids dressing up as Tyranids for Halloween!

Speaking of, Happy Halloween everyone!

I hope you get to gather with those you care about and enjoy the night!

I liked the twilight zone clip... I think they redid the same idea later in colour, I think Lithgow was the actor, and the monster was more demonic, a bit like the IronMaiden rock band 'mascot' Eddie... looked a lot more scary than this cuddly teddybear!

Thank you everyone! I really appreciate the feedback. Sorry I've been slow to reply back- just been one of those weeks. The vehicles are close to needing just the detail work done, so hopefully not long now.

To Anonymous: I hadn't notice Blogger didn't have that by default, thanks for pointing it out, I've added an RSS subscribe feeder now.